


1,000 words a day

by Orca (Orca2)



Category: N/A - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Blindness, Cannibalism, Demonic Possession, End of the World, F/F, F/M, Multi, Neglect, Stalking, just tons of fun topics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-05-14 23:56:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 13,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14779695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orca2/pseuds/Orca
Summary: wooooo consistency





	1. Chapter 1

The sun was a red disembodied heart which sunk into the horizon. Wispy tree branches grasped at the saturated sky, streaked with vibrant watercolor of ominous shades. Twigs clacked in their swirl, picked up by the whipping wind. Chilled air pressed against Mahiru’s exposed skin, which prickled.

 

The world’s end came in surrealist scenes which climbed out from the paintings hung in her bedroom, where dimensionality is nonexistent. Upside down staircases and reflective glass orbs which sucked at her frayed soul. Cracks in reality which lead to an endless bleak nowhere.

 

Like the humanity transpiring from her veins, the world was lost with each violent rip of the sun’s solar rays. It looked down upon them. It glowed with anger and reproach at the vile creatures which fed from it, much like God did. Ever since she drenched the weaving paths of asphalt of this city in splattered blood, the sun smiled back at her in a mirror of that same color. This hue grows brighter with each neck she finds the sharp curvature of her nails indented in, a new life added to her list.

 

Her dress was once diaphanous silk, delicate and white as porcelain. Now soaked with blood, it interlaced with her skin, and hung straight. Beads of scarlet dripped to pool at her ankles. It lost all light featheriness.

 

She was the messiah, destined to scrape the vermin from the face of this planet tranced in an eternal spin of chaos. Their organs smeared into unrecognizable clumps on pavement, like bugs when she smashed their exoskeleton beneath her shoe as a child.

 

Her fiance withered beneath her, already broken to some degree, as she’d adapted this habit of playing with her food.

 

Shinya was so pitiful, with his thin spider legs for lashes that framed his protruding eyes, casting long shadows down his hollowed cheeks. His desperation was infantile. His fingers clutched at the gritty dirt like that child he was seven years ago, aware of his own fragility and crying for the deceptive promise of safety his mother’s arms would bring him. The black sickness eating at her soul whispered it was a good look on him.

 

His lips moved, although she did not care to listen. The words were meaningless attempts to reconcile, a beg to spare his miserable life.

 

His eyes were the only interruption in the expanse of monochrome and red. A clear iridescent blue, pure as glacial ice. Translucent tears made sticky trails down his face. His gun lie in a pile of ashes, nothing but singed metal warped into an indistinguishable shape.

 

A line sliced across her face in the widest smile in the world. Her jaw ached to have bone snap between it. Now, each tooth in her mouth was a canine, ivory whittled to sharp points. In one jaunty motion, her lips caressed his uniform’s shirt, and her ashen hair blanketed his torso. With a kiss to his navel, Shinya broke into wailing pleas for the old Mahiru, whoever that was.

 

She dipped, and her bite tore past clothes, skin and muscle. Ripping the stitched parchment which was strung taught across his lithe build. His scream pierced her eardrums in sharp oscillations of octave, his lungs and throat scraped raw. It only made the thrumming savagery within herself beat with more vigor. She knew Shinya would not lie in passive defeat, unlike his colleagues. He’d collide his bruised fists with her immovable form, and try to reason with her through his agony, always clinging to the smallest string of hope until the end. Which was what made him so fun.

 

The snapping sinew on her tongue was rich with flavor. It was cold and slippery from his own blood, one she had yet to pour onto the ground. As he was lean, the muscle was chewy and fibrous. Her palette tinted metallic from all the iron in his blood.

 

His intestines lay strewn across his stomach. His chest was heaving and sputtering. Mahiru reached past the folds of his ripped skin. He convulsed and attempted to use the last ounce of his frigid shivering strength to crawl away from her.

 

The sound of burning filled the world. Crackling, sparking. Thick lingering toxic smoke, which curled into gray clouds with each inhale.

 

She maneuvered through the meat of his innards. A pattern of lined bones came into contact with her fingertips. His ribcage. Mahiru pressed past what was likely his diaphragm, to have her wrists enveloped by the panicked undulation of his lungs. Resistance met her hand as she pushed further. Encasing her arm was the subtle pulse of the draining life of Shinya.

 

When she wrapped around his heart, she could feel more than his rhythm. The tentative love he held so close, the less concealed jealousy that juxtaposed it. His desire for a taste of freedom, like a caged bird that had never known flight.

 

His eyes illuminated in shock. Their gazes strung across a wire, with an inseparable connection. He froze, and his breathing stilled.

 

She squeezed the organ in her grasp. Like a puppet devoid of freewill, his lungs inflated. They didn’t deflate until she released. Silent horror painted his face. His expression was agape concaves in a nylon sheet, a ghost wallowing in misery. Vulnerable.

 

Mahiru’s head tilted. Call it a resurfacement of her petty human desire for control, but this amused her. Shinya so wanted his individuality, to be more than a pawn bartered for his usefulness. In the end, his life was still at the mercy of her whims. “Your heart still beats for me.”

  
Her demon strength flowed down her arm. His heart portruded between the gaps in her fingers. It was quite squishy. She squeezed harder, muscles straining in her arm displaying this exertion of force. There’s a pop as she reduces his heart to mush, followed by a gush of  blood. She brings her hand up, ripping it from the arteries in his chest. There’s no life left in his eyes. He’s gone silent, jaw hanging limp. The cracks of his bone splintering between her teeth died against the setting sun, and consumed by the night swallowing the world with blackness. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is totally fiction and not at all related to my own life

Water dripped from the gutters. Heady pine floated in the air. From the splintered deck of her porch, clouds drench the neighborhood in gray. Monochrome dripped against the edges of the frame of wooden beams. They support the sloped roof, which tapered to an end here.

 

Sayuri slumped upon the damp cushion of a chair, mint green pillowcase dulled from age and subjection to weather. Steam wafted from the mug of black coffee beside her, resting on a glass table decorated with crescent stains. One of the legs was disproportionate to the rest, and it would vacillate from side to side when touched, making it clack with the floor.

 

Apprehension gripped her, an encasement as encompassing as the careful thread of a spider’s web weaved around its prey. The narrow street was silent, abandoned from where each end of the asphalt disappeared. The city sounds were vacant, no rambunctious children or screeching tires from cars that would burn her sinuses with exhaust. Distant thunder rumbled, but there was no crackling streaks of lightning to illuminate the sky.

 

Two foggy windows adjacent to the front door both had the shutters down, and slivers of orange light and faint laughter trickle through them. She was glad to be alone. Interaction was an impossibility with all the questionable thoughts looming in her mind, the promiscuity which was tangible enough to be ashamed of in the presence of others. Her face would go pallor, and she’d feel sick with every word that stumbled from her mouth. Never truly in the moment, swirling down a gutter on the inside.

 

The atmosphere was a muddled concoxion of everything but oxygen, no inhale was satisfactory, and she was always left desperate to breath. The openness of the neighborhood was suffocating. This city was underwater, and Sayuri was cement that sunk straight to the floor, awaiting her fate to drown. Her lungs ached, and cold liquid infiltrated her pores, seeped into her nose and mouth. Movement was languid, the world had a viscosity to it that placed everything in slow motion. Pigeons batted their wings against the dreary sky, and wind chimes rippled on their strings.

 

Goshi was a sweet boy, with his philosophical broodings and responsible demeanor. He’d gotten himself accepted into college, after all. He was just six feet to her five, an adult to her blooming teenhood. His chin was prickled with stubble, and his eyes intense. Too close, and he smelt of aftershave and musk, like her own father did.

 

His jokes would sometimes creep into the land of invasive obscenity. She could feel his sexual intent crawl over her skin, and wish to be wrapped in someone else’s. She’d shift with discomfort away from him. Cower with pulse hammering. Her mind would flash to images on the news of niave girls who’d gotten whisked up by men persuading them to a secluded place, and never seen of again. She’d wonder if she’ll be another face on the news.

 

His gaze would wander up the canvase of her skin, and where her thigh disappears into the hem of her skirt. Its difficult to maintain eye contact with him when they keep slipping down her clavicle, to the slope beneath her collarbones. His stare unpeels her clothes. He was certainly not the chivalrous young man her parents intended her to be with.

 

It’d be one thing if he were easier to look at. He wasn’t a dark handsome silhouette like Guren, with allure and a magnetizing draw, who she’d devoted her young life to. Who matched her in age. Goshi was oily and strange. An anomaly of social recluse and class clown. At least, that was his persona in his senior year of high school, the only time she knew him, being a freshman herself. He was a shadow stalking her down the hallways, and had somehow convinced her to give him her number. Now it was summer, and she had no reason to consider him.

 

  
Really, she only liked him in the intervening hours between dusk and dawn, when the sky was deep black and dotted with shimmering stars. When her bedroom door was locked and curtains drawn together. After she’d been rejected up and down by Guren all day, and felt to be a walking sludge of unattractiveness. Her mind would fog from shallow breath, and she’d imagine the sensation of his large adult hands wrapped around her waist and neck. Imagine his slimy voice complimenting the curves she felt insecure of, between huffs and pants.

 

It’s then when her screen lights up her wide pupils. When her cheeks were still radiating with heat, the hazy tingle of poor sensability that hormones put one in. The thinly veiled suggestion of a date culminates from the blocked text in her messages. It’s then when she’s stupid enough to agree. This Saturday. The promise haunts her.

 

Lies to her parents are difficult to pass her lips. Her neck curved down and her pupils fall away from theirs like inky black mollies in a fishbowl, darting to the other side whenever a tentative person approaches. She was wavering in all aspects. Sayuri jerked her foot, wrung her sweaty palms together. With a wavering voice, she stated that she‘s going to the mall with her friends on that day. They probably could tell she was lying, but allowed her to go anyway.

 

Sayuri stared at the houses across from her porch, and swore there was judgemental eyes peaking out the windows of her foothill resedense. Life was far too thick and intense. When a feeling of guilty immorality threatened her conscience, she repeated to herself that they both went to school together. She told herself four years was a sensible age gap, when really she knew it was five. 

 

This gloomy summer afternoon where no normal person had plans. In the full swing of monsoon season, she was waiting outside for a conspicuous car with dents in the hood and an uneven blue paint job to stop in this empty plot of street, and roll down its tinted windows. It’d start its coughing ignition and drive her off to hell know’s where. And she was morose enough to anticipate it.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The phrase dragged at Shinoa’s conscience. This string of words was a virulent disease which infected her veins with each syllable. Who would love you? A disembodied voice echoed this in the hollow chambers of her mind. Vibrations in her delicate ivory skull threatened to crack it, still fragile from her infantile underdevelopment. 

 

She was a withering moon flower in the corner of a locked room. She grew her frail extremities in dim conditions unsuitable for life. Television static filled the ambience of her pathetic abode, an apartment littered with instant food packets and stained clothes. This peppering of white and black on the screen was also the sole illumination of Shinoa’s sunken downcasted eyes. 

 

Her face was dollish, an immaculate placement of features upon an individual void of a soul. Her heart was patched with bandaids as if it were the scraped knee of a child, and not a vital organ. Arteries flowered outwards from it in crochets of yarn. Shinoa was a doll with stitches unwoven at the seems to reveal the cotton stuffing of her insides, limbs sewn back to her torso with lazy stabs of a needle through her fabric parchment. 

 

Outside her window cars honked, slurring voices shouted obscenities, beer bottles shattered against the pavement. Her ceiling creaked in rhythmic tandon for reasons she was too young to understand, despite it making her skin crawl with vague unease.

 

Her tongue collected vile phrases which resounded from that alleyway to seep past her window. The curious sounds evoked from there planted ideas to brew in her head, and float from her mouth in deadpanned questions that made adults gasp. Her round innocent features housed unfitting despicable thoughts, hidden behind a curtain of apathy.

 

Ashen purple was always a mucky color in her mind. It matched the dulled bruises on her skin. Skin so pale from lack of sunlight she was told to be a translucent ghost wrapped in a sheet, an apparition one could look straight past.

 

Who would love you? Kureto had said it in genuine confusion. His beady pupils inspected her with disgust, squared her up and concluded she was so miniscule she was nothing. A conniving rat, as her father sometimes put it when his breath smelt of hard liquor; a disgusting little creature sifting through garbage. 

 

Her shiny dress shoes were scuffed and their silver buckles broken. With arms wrapping around them, she brought her knees clad in ripped tights closer to her chest. Shinoa sunk into the couch, entranced by the flickering screen. These moments reminded her she was an abandoned inhabitant of a place not meant for her, a broken toy cast aside and forgotten by her uncaring owner.

 

Mahiru was owned by no one. Locking her in a room was an impossible concept to consider. She would light the apartment aflame, reduce it to a smoldering pile of ash while she stood unscathed upon the rubble. 

 

Shinoa waited in passive defeat. She rotted in this apartment, acquiscent to their whims. Her only focus was to not flinch when an inevitable hand came down upon her, not cry when her loved possessions were snapped in two. Bury her emotions in a grave, sing them a requiem, and become hollow. A taxidermy of a human being. 

 

Who would love you? Who would love you? These lyrics would repeat in warped scratchy audio from a broken record. 

 

While Mahiru let her brilliant love shine, Shinoa locked hers deep within herself as if it were a caged animal. Beat it, whipped it into submission, and wished with every molecule she consisted of to be capable of pulling it out of herself. Her deceased mother had decorated her bedroom with dolls, lined her dresser with them so they stared down upon her as she lay in bed at night. She had said to aspire to be one. Perfection comes from silence, her mother whispered as she wove her hair into her braid, and sewed her lips into a smile.

 

Her mother’s mind had dripped away to a coagulant mess at this point. Her screams would muffle through the walls, her thin graying hair was patchy from where she had torn it from her scalp. Demons inhabited her body more than she did, eager to paint her eyes a solid black and whittle each ivory tooth of hers to a canine. Her suicide surprised no one, and relieved everyone, desperate for some peace and quiet in the night hours for once.

 

Sometimes a kind gesture would spark some vulnerable emotion within her, and she’d stomp it out, as it was capable of burning down all she’d built up to this point. Now she understood that passion itself was a blessing, the ability to kindle a fire in the palm of your hand, watch the streaks of orange climb higher and burn hotter. 

 

Mahiru was too good at kindling that fire. It consumed her in its uncontrollable blaze. 

 

Her secluded world tasted of bubblegum and tap water. Calcium deposits on the sink and roaches skittering beneath the fridge. Her horizon reached as far as the two walls of her room. Another day where nothing happens, trapped in the same place, wasting her years as the television drained her childhood. The months flowed together, indistinguishable from the one before. 

 

Shinoa herself did not become taller, no physical feature denoted a change to reference to as the days tumbled by. 

 

Sometimes she compared herself to Shinya. He was the missing sock in her pair. She was his shadow, a little mirror. She’d known him since she could remember, he was just as much family as anyone. As time went by, it revealed the truth in this sentiment, as time tends to do. What separated her from him was his capability. He was dynamic, changing, and driven by an undercurrent of passion she herself lacked.

 

Although, in the end, he was spitting up dirt with blood leaking from every entrail. This made her cling to this philosophy all the tighter.

 

The only way not to lose what you love is to not love anything.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. DONT... READ THIS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ***THIS CHAPTER IS GARBAGE***
> 
> i was super busy today and totally forgot about this. i just spewed out random words until i hit 1,000

The fog of sleep deprivation and nauseous thrum of caffeine overdose was a miserable combination. Her mirror was a maze of deceptive angles which intermingled with her daydream hallucinations. She sat with precise stature, as if her shoulders were hung with ventriloquist strings. The gloss on her mirror was the thin film layer on a soap bubble. It spun colours that weren’t there despite being transparent.

 

Everything was warped from her drowsy haze, images fluctuating like ripples in a pond. She felt to be drunk, the words leaving her mouth mumbled nonsense she herself was not fully aware of. 

 

Her limp head rolled. Her eyelids begged to close. It was a miserable state in which she grinned yet wished to be dead. This energy did not belong. She was a sad song in a fast tempo and major chords.

 

Scars slashed across her thighs. They were deep enough that she knew they would be there forever. She’d never be able to show her skin again. Diagonal lines of pink would trace it, an irreversible reminder of her past mistakes, her imperfections. It was clean in comparison to the shattered purple viens which crawled down her legs.

 

She was bruised knees from childish recklessness, which she never seemed to grow out of.

 

He bore his skin with pride. It’d show when his jersey slipped a little too far, in the space between his socks and his It was a blank perfect canvas, devoid of blemish. He was hollywood bleach white.

 

She stabbed her razor into the rabbit. A cut ran down its stomach that reminded her of her own. She seperated the organs with her head resting upon her palm. The pancreas, the gallbladder, the liver, the kidneys. Her teachers voice meant nothing to her, and she wholly ignored it. He went at a pace far too slow.

 

She was entranced by his explanation of the organs. How each had to perform its function and work in tandon in order to maintain homeostasis. An error in one area cascades down to the rest of the body. She thought of him in a similar way, of that perfect specimen. He perfected a multitude of things, all from different aspects . He never over accentuated one area of his life. He could be a neurochemist, a politician, a professional sport player, and be the best in each field.

 

Insides disinterested her, rather than the act of preserving them. It also acted as a form of possessing their hollow corpse.

 

Shes fucking exhausted. Her hands are overflowing with time she cannot utilize, has no purpose for. He was so mature, although not the matureness that comes from age, but character. He was humble despite his obvious domination in any field, he never reacted to an insult or inappropriate joke. The levelheaded mediary who settled disputes and remained unbiased.Things would roll of him in his inpeneratable coating.

 

Maybe that's why she so wanted to stick a dissecting knife, scalpel, through him. He was pure intentioned and without cracks, whereas she was willing to shortcut and undermine and cheat her way to what she wanted. No glory or honor in it whatsoever. He loved the process, she loved the results. They were on opposite sides of a spectrum, one with such low standards, her inhibition and expectations withered away. Human decency cast aside. The other confident in his own actions simply because everything he did was right, correct.

 

He never missed a note, a goal, a question. His test scores never less than a hundred. He was a calculator, incapable of mistake. She was nothing, and saw herself as everything.

 

These lies are permanent. The facade you paint for yourself made with ink that doesn't wash out. This mask will always have a faint outline upon your face no matter how hard you scrub.

 

It came naturally. To rot in her room, do nothing productive, waste her young life away. The years past without much thought, seasons dying one after the other. Being a no one in the background acknowledge by not one person amongst the passing crowd. Not conspicuous or especially unordinary. It would take her classmates years to realize it if she ever went missing.

 

He didn’t become jealous, competitive, or spiteful. Those were not what drove him. He had so much self control. He was refined. He could likely withhold from food for months if he so wished.

 

And most of all, in near contradiction of his previous traits, he was charming. Diplomatic, sociable, magnetizing. Because his words were both shallow and genuine, as he never had conniving motives behind things. He had no delicate sense of pride to uphold.

 

He also didn’t hang out with people in general. He was quiet and nondisruptive, working on his craft until the late hours of dawn. He’d sometimes weave a smile and a laugh, and provoke some lilting joke. Always lilting, sensual, a lullaby you could lose yourself in a trance to.

 

She wanted to be him. She wanted to be loved like him. But on the surface, he was a corporeal representation of all things unattainable to her. Except he was physical, and therefor attainable. She’d mount him on her wall, he’d be all hers.

 

He was a mystical deer who had wandered into her backyard. There by chance. A beautiful apparition she tried not to scare away as she stalked closer and closer to it. Without it knowing, of course. Her own feeble life was put on the backburner. Chasing him was a more than welcome distraction from her spiraling world.

 

The flashing red and blue police lights cast up her window. His face is plastered in black and white on thin printer paper, checkered across the walls of the school.

 

She sees it everywhere now. How his muscle fiber curved against his oblongata. She wanted him silent. Still, a specimen to be observed.

 

Pristine. He already acted half the part. She was deep into this, a longing which consumed her being.

  



	5. Chapter 5

The grass rippled against his perimeter, whipped by howling wind. Icy chill pressed his exposed skin, saturating the tops of his flushed cheeks. The sensation was fresh.

 

Blades of grass sprouted out in the gaps between his fingertips. They were textured with grooves that ran down them vertically. Their waxy coating allowed them to collect droplets of dew in the early dawn. Monocots, his teacher had told him about those type of plants once.

 

Grimes of dirt collected in his nail bed as he sunk his hand into the moist ground. It was clumped into shapes similar to rocks, the only aspect distinguishing them was they broke apart when pressure was exerted upon them. As the smell of fertile soil basked in the air, of worms and slight rotting, molecules of geosmin releasing when he broke them free from their placement within the pieces of earth.

 

Dirt smudged trails against his jeans. The fabric was rough against his skin and acted as a suffocating circumference around his legs. They restricted his movement, and accompanied every shift with chafing. His jeans creased into overlapping folds at his knee and waist.

 

The wind carried scents of organic raw, so fresh it made one consider retrieving this disinfectant.

 

This is what the color green felt like, is what Guren had told him. A dewey spring day sorrounded by foliage, when the world was cool in the early hours of dawn. Shinya was blind. The memory of his family’s faces and surrounding world became forgotten words forever fading into quieter and quieter whispers as the years went by. In the tired moments of deep night, in Guren’s apartment sitting cross-legged on his bed, he’d try to describe the hues of a rainbow, as Shinya followed his exhausted voice as it traveled across the room. Pacing, he assumed.

 

Purple was the next he spoke about. Shinya had already heard all the trite overused descriptions of it, that it was a mixture of cool and warm, a tone associated with royalty and flowers. These aided in no way to painting a mental image in his mind.

 

His voice drew long, deep words. The sentences held an ounce of smirk to them, as this color happened to be in the ring of his iris. Positive connotations came with the mere mention of this color, and made Shinya’s chest flutter. Purple wrapped him in a cozy blanket, enraptured him in a feeling of safety. Purple was the fizz of cola on his tongue, pleasant with a little bite that kept it from being boring.

 

Guren said it was moody. The darker the shade, the more this statement held true. A color worn by those seeking an expression of their reclusity, a vibrant scream. A declaration of individuality, considered edgy by most.

 

Synthetic, a rare color not found in nature. The color sounded like the boppy techno music blared in clubs, with auto-tuned vocals, accompanied by flashing strobe lights. The drops were intense and the base rattled you to your core. The lyrics sometimes brooding. It was fun, popular, yet took itself too seriously.

 

The texture was silicon. Plastic, fake, impossibly smooth. Velvet, a fabric woven with meticulous irresistibility. A composition of fancy chairs and clothes, everything extravagant and wealthy.

 

The taste was blueberries. A tangy sweet whirl of flavors. It’s taste contradicted its sound, being rather mellow and bearable. A smoothie that goes down cold, leaves your mouth a bit numb the small shavings of ice.

 

When he referenced orange, he could feel the bumpy texture of a pumpkin’s rind, the mild balance of flavors within a carrot. The sound carrots made when snapped, a crisp crack.

 

He’d imagine yellow as the prickle of warm sunlight glazed across his skin. The high laughter of his friends. Guren told him it was getting into a warm pool in summer. You have no responsibilities. An annoying person sometimes splashes you in the face from time to time.

 

Red was a sharp attacking pain. Red was the consuming hatred you held for someone in a moment of impulse. It was a surge of power and capability, a rabid animal barring its sharp teeth. It was pressing your hand on a hot stove, and jerking your hand away.

 

Shinya politely declined testing that comparison.

 

His yawn was a languid inhale. He was getting tired, Shinya could tell. The light switched clicked, and the whoshing of Guren’s sweatpants shuffled closer until his knees collided with the edge of the bed.

 

“Fuck,” he muttered. His hands collided with the soft cloud of his comforter. His stumbling movements made rippling sounds against the smooth blanket.

 

His warm breath fanned Shinya’s neck. The wavy tresses of his hair tickle his nape. His face grew bright. His hand wrapped around the entirety of his forearm, to garner his attention.

 

“You can find your way to the couch, right?” Guren asked. His face melted from the heat exuding from it. Rather than crashing in his living room for the millionth time, he stood in place. With a slight tremble to his hand, he pulled down the edge of the blankets, and disappears inside of them.

 

The room is dark, so Guren was in the same position as him, unable to see his expressions or other physical reactions. There was silence, nothing but the ambient hum of air conditioning and buzz of electrical appliances plugged into the wall.

 

He climbed in after him, groaning when his face hit the pillow. He could tell he’s laying flat on his back from how his shoulder grazes him, and his breath directed upwards.

 

Guren radiated with heat. He turned all the sheets closest to him a puddle of warmth spreading outwards. His arm slithered forward, to lay limp across him. He could feel his stomach, and the defined shape of his torso. He didn’t question it, they were close enough friends. Shinya was dying, the familiar cologne he wore a surreal comfort.

 

His eyelids fluttered. His body wanted sleep, when he wanted the moment to never end. It was bliss, an epitome of his fever high daydreams. His mind was muddled mush.

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

She coughed into the shoulder of her cotton jacket. Night was a young cardinal singing a cacophony in its labyrinth of twigs. The song scraped her eardrums. His limp body strung across the trunk of a willow, shoulders mounted like a scarecrow. His shirt caught on the ragged edges of bark peeling from it. The tree rotted, infested with maggots and mold which crawled across its surface. Their mycelium ran deep, and tangled with the parallel lines of vasculature running from the roots to the leaves. She hoped the same fate amongst the gritty soil would not also bestow him. 

 

Despite his stature, he was faint and phantom-like. His chest rose and fell in delicate metric huffs. Grooves of where his rib cage met skin on inhale outlined his shirt. In her mind, his wrists were reedy, so frail she worried the slight pressure of her thumb could break it. Life pulsed beneath her fingertips, the gush of blood a vibrant atonement to his potent undercurrent of ambition. 

 

Velvett met her when she traced a hesitant hand down his forearm. She jerked away, and the burning fear of being caught felt similar to defacing an artifact within a museum. Her manic eyes twitched in sporadic circles within their sockets as she whipped her head around to scan the forest. A crunch of leaves or rustle where the wild overgrown grass was long enough to conceal someone made a continuous beckon for her paranoid glance. 

 

In their relative proximity, she leaned over him like a desperate withering plant curls toward the sun, basking in it. Gossamer lashes curled on his cheekbone, fluttering when he stirred. They illuminated from reflection of the few slivers of sunlight which could escape past the clouds attempting to swallow the sun. His swan neck would loll the deadweight of his head when shifted. It was elegant and lanky, his throat curving to his where his defined clavicle disappeared into his unbuttoned collar. 

 

His pale, unblemished skin was sullied by streaks of dirt, still damp and mushy from the earlier rain shower. She worried for his lamina to become the decomposing rind of a fruit deflowered from its source. Leaves had paused the incessant drip from their tips not long ago. Residue of water which had clung to their branches until they formed coalescing droplets, an attractant to gravity’s pull. Which would no longer be a concerning factor to his prolonged preservation. She spun a broken record which insisted he was dead, unable to fathom her reaction if his eyes slid open. Reality would shatter.

 

His breath was warm condensation which swirled in the air and fanned her face as she grew closer. Tendons in her arms twitched and turned her grip to a shivering ghost of a touch. She looped her arms under his own, and as she pulled him up the wood grasped at his shirt, threatening to tear it. He slumped against her, and plastic buttons jabbed her chest. A torrid blush streaked across her face. Features riddled with acne become incarnadine. Adrenaline saturated her veins as the intense surreality of the situation creeped up on her, a duality of ecstatic and terrified. 

 

His converse drew lines into the mud as she dragged his limp body with two shaky steps. Heaviness stunted her movement to a near stumble. A rusty wagon she’d taken from her father’s toolshed stood within a close distance, its faded calcified cart containing a blanket thrown in the center. As she approached, her grip slipped. His torso collided with the metal in a thud which teased the promise of broken ribs. It creaked from the hinges of its wheels from his weight. Limbs dangled from the lipped circumference. 

 

She snuck a hand underneath him to tug at the blanket. It was a shaggy coarse texture, fraying with strands of wool. Smooth linen made her hands slip from his pants as she contorted him into a position which would fit in the cart. Heat radiated from her face, along with panic. The heady scent of pine and oppressive after-rain hanging heavy as the world dimmed and sun dip past the horizon made the looming danger of wildness ever more apparent. Now crickets chirped, owls fluttered overhead, frogs groaned in the lake. Her own boots sank into the mud in her frantic adjustments. 

 

Scratchy wool was thrown over him and tucked into the sides. Clanking of wheels against rocks pounded at the forest’s ambience. The cart’s undulation on uneven ground shook its cargo. She weaved the wagon around thick foliage, sweaty hands tense on the handlebars. When rutty dirt turned into sidewalk, she sped down the pavement, and the cart bumped at every crack it collided with. She was thankful the foothills were stark in this late noon, abandoned if not for the quiet observer of the setting sun and crows perched atop the swooping telephone wires.

 

With an inadequate physique, she huffed while draining the last ounces of her exertion to push the wagon into the garage. A mechanical hum was heard when she pressed the button to close the rippling shutters which acted as the door. A sliver of golden light trickled from the door to the living room. She pressed an ear to the wood. No television was heard, nor hum of music or sizzle of meat scorched upon a skillet. She twisted the knob to peek inside, her heart hammering. Lamps glowing yellow and soft burgundy couches angled around a coffee table drank the silence as if it were a viscous substance hanging in the atmosphere. 

 

Wheels groaning on wooden floor disrupted this perfect silence. Mud trailed brown streaks down the floorboards and fuzzy carpet with some clumps accompanying the smudge, although tapered out before arriving at the other side of the room. She’d clean it up later.

 

Her basement door glowered at her, daring her to do what her impure thoughts had stirred into her subconscious. She obliged.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

“Fuck you, Katy,” Tyler slurred while clanking his beer can down on the table, after taking a heavy swig. Her annoying cackle resounded in the distance in response. He gripped his pounding forehead, and waves of agonized heat fell off from it. The music blaring from the speakers so loud it pulsed the furniture and echoed in his bones, accompanied by lights flashing in sporadic seizure inducing tandon did nothing to aid his headache. He swore his skull was going to burst from his mind swelling.

 

The acidic sting of bile tickled the back of his throat. He wasn’t going to throw up, he wouldn’t allow it. Tyler swallowed hard, choking down his disgust. He buried his head in his arms, deciding this was the most miserable he’s ever been. This notion was only amplified when Katy dipped into his field of view, wearing a snarky full-toothed grin. No concept of personal space, she leaned over the table he sat at, hair pooling upon in it as she did.

 

Multicolored lights dyed her unruly strands which seemed to be transparent, absorbent of their surroundings. Weak to peer pressure, one might say, much like herself. Along with the room, they flashed electric blue, pink, and red. Strange shadows cast upon her metrically, as the sources of illumination were placed at different areas of the room, and took turns flickering. Her stupid white grin remained unaffected.

 

“Having fun?” she shouted over the trap music raping his ears. Tyler snarled at her mocking remark. Katy threw her head back and laughed.

 

He smacked his palms on the polished surface to keep himself steady while he stood. A sway coursed through his frame which raked him in tsunami waves which tore up sailboats. He was going to be seasick, and he was on land. Tyler snatched his near empty can, and stumbled towards the bathroom door in the corner. Lukewarm liquid splashed about in its bottom. A fuzzy rug slid over his foot, and he can imagine his fate face-down in the floor as he nearly trips.

 

She appeared like a phantom capable of teleportation, bony shoulder jabbing into his side as she links their arms. His head pivoted, bottom lip pressed to his teeth to form the sound an f makes, a slur of obscenities just begging to escape his mouth. A tug forced all attention to relocate to his automotion, and the insult died on his tongue. His vision blurred from confusion, lights and colors bleeding together, faces and laughter and chanting warping into one mass. The ceiling swirled with the floor, and he caught the reflection of his dazed expression in scattered beer bottles as he was dragged across the room.

 

The hefty sound of the bathroom door slamming shut was a reality check which snapped him into consciousness, at least temporarily. His gaze was a limp presence drawing lines on the white surface of this door. A light switched on, flicking life to illuminate the room with a proper incandescent light bulb, not those crazy diodes they had out there. The muffled voice of a female singer and baseline hum pressed against the door. Slivers of color leaked out from the crack beneath it.

 

A trickle of water hit water, and Tyler spun around, mortified that he had come into the bathroom while someone else was using it. His face was already burning from embarrassment and intoxication. He threw his arms up in an apologetic gesture, just to find Katy emptying the remains of his beer into the toilet with a stone face. 

 

“Oh.” She had been that figure pulling her through the crowd, as his foggy memory could recall. The word was hesitant to leave his mouth. He was still angry at her for taking him to this sketchy place. When the beer dripped to a pause, she threw it into the trash. She stood, and her hand fell to her hip as if it were its natural place to be.

 

“Didn’t you need to throw up?” Katy said. She gestured at the toilet, where yellow beer diffused with crystalline water and the faint fizz of bubbles popped. His face curled up in reproach.

 

“Not while you’re here!” Tyler choked out. She raised an eyebrow at him, a speculative expression which melted into a grin.

 

“What, are you shy?” She prodded him in the stomach, and he batted her hand away. His first attempt grazed her skin, aim now nonexistent. Her motions were far more controlled than his own, despite having drunk four cans to his two. He braced himself against the porcelain sink, when his frantic movement caused him to lose balance.

 

“You really are a lightweight, aren’t you? Maybe I shouldn’t have dared you to finish that second corona.” She ran a sympathetic hand down his shoulder. Her concern was genuine, which ticked him off more than if it wasn’t. He responded with a grumble and massaged his aching temple.

 

The white sterility of this room and its blinding white lights was unlike the outside party, although overwhelming in its own way. Bleach had a characteristic sting on inhale, probably coming from the sink which was so white it shined. The mere essence of raspberry airfreshener hung around them, preferable to the acrid stench of sweat and cigarettes which burned his sinuses not long ago.

 

For a moment he swore he could trace a hint of the earthy smell of marijuana, but the sensation disappeared before he could comment on it, most likely a result of his own loopiness. A strange whirr filled the room, and he glanced down to see Katy was filling a glass with tap water. She twisted the knob back, and pressed the cup towards him.

 

“This will keep you from getting hungover tomorrow.” Katy said. Her voice was serious, stark. Nothing like the fun, reckless Katy he had come to know and hate. He took the cup with reluctance, downing it bottoms up like a shot. A trickle slipped down his chin.

 

His drowsy eyes poured into her. Tyler slumped against the sink again, his spacial awareness fading from him.

 

“Can we go now?”


	8. Chapter 8

In her mind, the setting was picturesque. Fluorescent light flickered in strobes, casting an unproportional composition of colors within the spectrum, heavy with blue and lacking flashy pink tones which denoted vibrancy. Metal weaved its way up to the ceiling in delicate compartments of shelves, strung with hollow tubes which could be bent with slightest of pressure. Humming filled the room from the buzz of electricity overhead. In the lights above, trapped moths or cockroaches either fluttered against the glass, or lay curled in a tangled heap of spindly limbs, dead. Their silhouettes were dark, and cast faint shadows on the storage room floor.

 

Her attention centered around what she thought most intriguing. While their class had displays, the ones which sat in this room were not as accustom to public viewing. Mild disturbment came from the preserved items in that room, while the essence of mental disintegration resided in this one. Jars of formaldehyde were teardrop shaped, to ponder the question of how they managed to fit such large animals past their flask, and make the part of the mind specialized in childlike thoughts conclude the creature must have been raised in it. The liquid housed within them was the familiar ruddy pale yellow, with grit collecting where the still surface line of water met air.

  
These jars were much larger, made of thick polyester glass. Within one, a fox with marbles for eyes lolled its tongue out, which had turned a sickly green. The fur floated in waves, its individual strands fraying with the subtle whirling undercurrents. All color drained from its parchment, now shades of burgundy. Its limbs were coiled like a baby in a womb. She wrinkled her nose at this. There had to be more effective methods of preservation than this.

 

She wanted her darling’s bones to be a brilliant white that never dulled. Bleach burned the inside of our mouth when she took a brisque inhale at the intrusive thought which had slipped into her conscious. The lack of windows made this place its own little world secluded from the outside, where morose thoughts could creep up her spine and whisper in her ear.

 

* * *

 

She was a taxonomy bird who flocked across the world on a puppet string. Feigning life glittering in her eyes which were replaced with marbles, insides gutted and stuffed with cotton. Wires on its insides curving it into a dynamic position. Her beak twisted into a smile. She attempted to convince herself she had drive, freedom, not locked in a cage. Her happines was fake to the point of grotesque. 

 

She spat out blood in his face. It dribvled down her chin in dark streaks, splintering off from eachother. While fresh blood tended to be vibrant, this deep hue was just as fresh.

 

I decided to fucking give up, kill myself. Kids learning french in eight grade. Correcting me on taxonomy. I strip her skin from her, leave her bare and raw. A pink blob of flesh. Let me be savage, maturity is a complex. Unmitigated flow of words, im fucking tired i don’t want to write i feel like its a dead pursuit and so is piano and art. all of my interests. study on your science and math. work on those you fav. haha what a save and i don’t even have autocorrect. i want to crush her arm in my fingers, string her ego up on a cross and whip it into submission

ihave never wished on hope, never need a telescope to see where i am going. i have never been the one trying hard to hold my tongue is my sterio я не верит мой глаз. смерт быт ето толко всего избе. death is the only way out. escape добры вечер bird птеца. things have changed for me. предмет обладать изменением для меня. and that is okay. и это хорошо. i am coming. я быт презод kaleidoscope eyes калейдоскоп.  

килл ме килл ме сай тхат йоулл килл ме леаве ме леаве ме го он анд фукинг леаве ме и донт каре абоут анутхинг бут йоу анутхинг бут йоу ше саид до йоу лове ме и толд хер онлй партлй и онлй лове мй бед анд мй мома им сори тхис ш ит ис супер фукинг анойинг гет оф му дик анд майбе бе а парт оф сометхинг контрибуте то тхе ворлд и донт кнов

Im restles tired everything anything arcalescent oliescent fuck fuck you you how dar you i would never let into you so i ll spleep in the woods and ill never come back ill live in a zoo and i won’t say where im at im home among the animals home among the savage and wild ill eat you like a canibal although youd be quiet mild (oh well) im sorry boy but i don’t wanna fucking know you anymore. im awful coy but only when im around you, i sink to the floor. you make me feel incompetent your half my age, make twice my rent, i don’t  know what to do, im fucking screwed , why do i compare when im old and used. i can’t move

 

im worried this will creep into someones hands. copyright maybe. thats the typa deal were talking about here. rejected from collage, p leaked, lmao that sounded bad. dam i m cautious. haha bye lol


	9. Chapter 9

present tense is gay. this is where i lay phrases to die. sing herself a requiem and become a taxidermy of a human. regret swallowed him whole, disappearing in the months of winter to lay dead beneath the ice. yellow is annoying pop songs which remind you of your childhood. becoming dizzy as you spin around on a carousel. a pool party in summer, swimming in a warm dream. someone splashing you in the face with water. the pop of fireworks and excited cheers. laughing at stupid things until your stomach hurts and you wish you could stop.

the graveyard. a melancholy of color sprinkles over the endless expanse of fenced area. tall, looming fences curved at the tip. arches swoop above, and vines inwine with them.

she lets go of the book. the spine slides from her palm, and rolls through the air. The aged yellow pages flutter in anger at their distreatment before concluding with a distant thud.

her room draped with instruments carved from bone. he stared upon the pink swoops and swirls. thorns prickle his side. She stood in an elegant sweep, and her dress whips behind her. she moved with conviction, entranced by a ghost of her past she followed down the hall. she hums that familiar song she played on all her instruments. It crawled under his skin, made him feel sick. Although it was sweet, it carried a ache to it. A longing, a bare open wound.

i could throw up. i hated it so much. i hated her. that stupid sny smile, sarcastic sneer, unwarented comments. fuck off. die. worthless piece of grabage. entitlement, superiority complex. it melted into myself. she was a reflection, a soulless mirror. is astronomy real. write write write like a sparrow on a mockingbird desk, like the splinters of wood id bang my head against as i went mad. mad from the mirrors darting out from every angle. a sinking feeling in my chest. crying because i know im inadequet, plagiarized, terrified my secret will get out. my croked branch will leave a crooked shadow. People will see straight through me. Im a lier, a fraud. Starve. What a beautiful word, a precious concept. I always wanted to. what a gift. A blessing. building up my repertoire. sicker than a nicker snicker. 

loom spoon moon maroon doom tune dune monsoon gloom room noon typhoon balloon groom  . it painted a sordid story of bribes and scams.

She floated in the loutish sun. It singed her skin a crispy peeling red, as unforgiving as her temperamental fiance. Her mind wailed at the reminder of him. Boil marks indented bubbles on her skin like a pancake ready to be flipped. Visceral disruption returned to her fading headache. Towels tangled her legs, shackled her in this agonzing situation. Much like her relationship.

”я люблю тебя, дорогая”

“Ага-ага”

он смеется.

”спасибо за завтрак”

”без разницы. спешите внизу. становится холодно.”

она спускается по лестнице. стонет он.

“хорошо пахнет”

“это жирная. вы пытаетесь дать мне сердечную болезнь?”

“неблагодарный”

“Я просто шучу, дорогая”

вы должны скоро уйти на работу.

ты хочешь оставить меня?

абсолютно.

я вижу как это.

чем дольше вы ушли, тем лучше.

но я так устал! Могу ли я взять выходной?

это не вариант

Прощай, дорогая. я буду по тебе скучать. каждую секунду дня.

да заткнись.

Я люблю тебя!

достаточно.

ты любовь моей жизни!

Теперь я закрываю дверь.

он целует ее в щеку. она закатывает глаза. его машина грохочет. он уезжает. она уже чувствует себя любовью. она закрывает дверь. уже в доме слишком тихо. это жутко и одиноко.

эта жизнь без него безразлична. она смотрит телевизор, хотя от нее не приходит радости. развлечения существуют, чтобы заполнить пустоту. мороз в морозильнике зовет ее, временное излечение от ее печали. у нее возникает соблазн. дорогой, он всегда говорил это. она могла это повторить. после того, как он это произнесет, она может умереть счастливым.

Иногда это ее вина. она чувствует себя виноватой за ненавистные фразы, которые она говорит. ее действия инстинктивны. это была привычка, которую невозможно остановить. ее угрюмый ум задается вопросом, не вернется ли он из поездки на автомобиле. он попадет в автокатастрофу, и ее последние слова ему будут жестокими. он заслуживает гораздо большего.

она солнце. удушающий, властный. угроза. он - спокойные волны, тихая луна. цветок увядает в интенсивном свете. он делает ей больно внутри. ее никогда раньше не любили. она не верит, что она заслуживает его. она грубая и не должна быть способной к его любезному обращению.

when they have sex, his pupils swallow his features. he coughs when she chokes him. he can taunt her in conversation, but in bed it is different. his skin is perfect. sometimes, she puts bruises on it. her kisses are hard. she wraps around him like a python.

когда они занимаются сексом, его ученики проглатывают свои черты. он кашляет, когда она его дразнит. он может издеваться над ней в разговоре, но в постели все по-другому. его кожа прекрасна. иногда она накладывает на него синяки. ее поцелуи тяжелы. она обволакивает его, как питон.

публично, она может схватить его за штаны. его щеки покраснели. он кусает губу. он облизывает ее киску, поэтому сосредоточился на том, чтобы угодить ей. он любит ее тело. он говорит, что это приятно для него, но она колеблется. они всегда в положении, которое она хочет. она трахает его, а не наоборот. это он объективирован и используется.

он был невиновен, как ребенок. такой гибкий. легко наклониться к ее капризам. она взяла свой цветок, она ему принадлежит. он мог бы украсить воротник, который утверждает его как своего питомца. ее массажный инструмент. он мог творить чудеса своим хитрым языком. он был хорошей куклой, существующей только для нее. он вращался вокруг нее. она моргнула, не убедившись, что это реально.  
  
Однажды она заставила его взять член своего друга. он был намного больше и старше, доминировал бы во взаимодействии. она хотела услышать его скрипы и стоны. жалким и уязвимым. она прошептала вещи учения на ухо, когда его били. его рот был открыт и пускал слюни. она называла его шлюхой за то, что так легко проходила. потом он стал ревновать, глядя на другого голого мужчину, и она рассмеялась.

сперма просочилась из его киски. его обиженные губы были пухлыми и красными. у его искристых бедер были синяки. на его щеках сузились слезы. она провела пальцем по нему, чтобы найти свою шейку матки. он был, конечно, беременным. его киска была такой теплой. она скривилась в нем. он застонал от чрезмерной стимуляции.  
  
он помнит, как он умолял ее остановиться, схватив ее за руку, сказав, что она собирается поститься. что это больно. она была слишком большой. он был застенчив, попытался прикрыть его маленькую дыру.

он умолял его вырваться из-за того, что он не контролировал рождение ребенка. его слова стали бессвязными, когда он сильнее толкнул его в матрас, мысль о том, чтобы заставить синью полных детей, загнать его. он задохнулся от слюни и скрипов. его киска была настолько тугой, что он поставил его в транс. он держал бедра, так что он не мог отморозить, и он мог заставить его вверх и вниз по его члену. его головокружение сильно ударило по шейке матки с каждым ударом. будучи настолько глубоко проникли в ужас омега. его узел раздулся, заперев его. сперма рывка прямо в его плодородную матку.  
  
Шинья вопил, говоря «нет». его наполнял бесконечный поток диплом. он попытался уйти, только чтобы повредить его внутренности. он раздвинул ноги, чтобы полюбоваться, как его губы растянулись вокруг него. он наблюдал за своим пульсом, когда он закачал его все больше и больше семени. он поморщился, трахал его своим узлом. он нащупал сундук, зная, что со временем это набухает.

он достал свой телефон, чтобы щелкнуть снимками его растрепанного, непристойного состояния. его киска набита огромным членом. его испорченное лицо. его голые ноги. он перевернул его, и он сделал болезненный звук. он едва держался за свои слабые конечности. он тяжело нащупал задницу. он разложил его. Затем он ударил плюшевую плоть. он пошатнулся и покраснел. он отшатнулся и попытался отстраниться, только причинив ему боль. он чередовал руки и углы, обожая свое беспомощное состояние, связанное с ним, заставлял брать то, что он дал. он дисциплинировал его. его женственные кривые закончились тонкой талией, хотя теперь он растянулся на диване и петухе.


	10. Chapter 10

On the morning after his funeral, my family had congregated to his adoptive mother’s house. The doorway was a tangle of forlorn hugs and apologies for loss. Once inside, I was met with an arrangement of walking canes and the steady creak of a rusty hinge as Glenda closed the door behind us.

The couch I sat upon was comfortable, if not somewhat worn, sunken in from overuse. Slivered rips frayed the pillows to reveal cotton. The seams had been sewn back together with meticulous needle strokes to form cross stitches of yarn. Light conversation filled the space, a veil to their heavy sorrow. Windchimes tinkled a soft melody from outside.

Within the living room stood an antique mahogany piano. The wallpaper was of a floral design, peeling at the corners. Tassels draped from the curtains. Faded sepia photographs decorated each available surface, depicting moments in a time when I was not yet alive. When they were young, cheeks still round from baby weight, standing upon spindly legs and adorned by cheesy bowl cuts.

Across from me, Glenda weaved her fingers together upon her lap. They were dainty pianist hands, pale and carved with wrinkles, so frail I worried the slightest pressure might snap them. Her words were soothing, her eyes reflective pools of blue, kept shimmery by unshed tears. They reminisce upon his life, exchanging memories of him like they were valuable currency, as there would be no more moments with him any longer. When they spoke, painting images in my mind of a Michael very much alive, I could almost pretend he was still breathing, some place far away and safe, rather than embedded in the dirt.

“Oh, you two and the lake,” Glenda groaned when the topic was introduced. Her delicate hand rubbed her undereyes, as if exacerbated by the mere mention.

Her son, Michael's brother, spoke of a night they both had dragged a canoe to it. Illegal for two reasons, the lake being closed at the hour, and canoes an unacceptable mode of transportation upon it. Water sloshed against the sides. The only illumination was the moon which hung high above, dancing its reflection on the waves. As adolescents, it was the only boat they had access to, and they were intent on racing it around the perimeter.

“We really wreaked havoc out there,” He said, motioning towards the back door. A slight ditch remained from when they had dug a pit in the backyard as kids, filled it with water from the hose, and splashed around in their makeshift pool. His fingernails had been layered with a crescent of grime. The sloshing water was a mucky brown. When they had clambered back inside with sopping clothes as they trailed mud on the kitchen floor, his mother made a shrill scream.

For hours on end, he would escape. Michael slipped past the tunnel he had dug beneath the fence, which connected his house to the neighbor. Where Glenda was strict from the sobriety being a single working mother caring for three children brought, Tom next door had a mom who always had snickerdoodles fresh from the oven.

If this house had a voice, it would be soft spoken. A gentle whisper to lull one to sleep. It would be wisened from the seventy years it had stood on the foundation, against whether and age. Oh, the stories it would tell, of the faded stain on the wall and indent in the ceiling. This quiet observer had seen so much.

Those moments dissolved. This became the same kitchen where bottles would smash against linoleum tile, shards spreading out to disappear beneath the fridge and cupboards. He would promise to quit, even when his breath hung with the acrid stench of hard liquor. Curses were thrown, where he now felt remorse. Little did he know what he thought was an unfortunate habit would be the end of him.

Growing up, he had heard all sorts of claims made to label his brother, and at times agreed with them. Alcoholic, high school dropout. But he was so much more than his bad decisions. He had aspects not gleaned from any amount of homework completion or academic achievement. He could appreciate things, see value where others saw coal. His presence painted the dreary monotone of life with vibrancy. He spun gold out of his hard life.

In that night on the canoe, he was mesmerized. At the time, he rolled his eyes when Michael leaned over the edge, to proclaim he saw stars darting beneath the surface. That if he reached out, he could grab one. They were fish, he had drawled, though he cast his arm out regardless. The boat leaned, slight at first, but then toppled sideways. The water was prickling ice, so bitterly freezing his limbs became numb. It tasted of hard minerals. The violent splashing had alerted someone, who came with a glaring flashlight to investigate.

When they resurfaced, he was green from head to toe with algae and smelt of seaweed. Cold night pressed against his skin, threatened to give him hypothermia. The officer shoved them in the back of his car. They were dragged back home by the scruff of their neck to be thoroughly scolded by their mother. His clothes ran through the laundry an infinite number of times, though the green hue never left.

Translucent ghosts rose from the mug in my palm, in whirls of steam which smelt as tangy as the pomegranate tea tasted. Still far too hot to do more than sip, and would burn my tongue on each attempt. The teabag bobbed, and dyed the water with swirls of deep pink. On my way out, the floorboards bent beneath me, as if they too were just barely holding together.

My throat closed up. I now held a deep understanding for the term heartache, it felt like weeds were growing in my chest. I sat it upon the coffe table with a clink, and said goodbye.


	11. Chapter 11

Wispy disheveled strands covered Simon’s forehead, which she brushed to the side to expose more of his face. Pillow creases made wavy indents on his cheek. His lips parted around a soft snore, strewn limbs tangled with sheets in a childish manner. Delicate long eyelashes flutter on his cheekbone.

 

“You’re going to be late,” Valerie said. He groaned in response, and squinted as white morning light beamed through the translucent curtains. 

 

Her socks padded down the mahogany wood stairway, each step precise as to not slip across the smooth surface. The rustle of Simon clawing out from his nest of blankets diminished, instead replaced with crackles and pops. The kitchen appeared sterile, a clean picturesque decor straight from a magazine. Inside were four sinks made from blinding white porcelain, twin ovens with a metallic sheen, a wide fridge with a silver touchscreen and various compartments. None of which were ever used. 

 

The skillet handle managed to maintain a frosty cool on her palm, unlike the pan which seared an omelette in oil within it. It slid onto a plate. The coffee machine made whirrs and choked out steam. Valerie poured the smooth black content into a mug. 

 

Arms wove around her waist. Simon kissed her cheek from behind. “Good morning, sweetheart.” 

 

His temple rested on her as he held her tight. His breath was warm on her neck, his pressure through the soft sweatshirt soothing. In her distraction, her grip on the handle faltered. From the wavering stream dribbles of coffee slip over the cup’s rim. She allowed her shimmery black hair to fall in her face, to hide the singe of a blush.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbled. 

 

Simon walked to his place at the dining table, pulling out a chair. She busied herself with washing the pans, turning a dial to have water whish from the faucet. 

 

“So greasy, are you trying to give me cardiac disease?” His cheeks were stuffed with omelette, although he managed a quipish tone despite the food in his mouth. 

 

“Ungrateful.” Valerie set a cup of coffee beside him, and then returned to washing. The sound of silverware clinking in the sink made a crisp noise which echoed in the vast space, bouncing off the far vacant walls. 

 

Simon stood after inhaling about half of his breakfast. At the door, he brandished the satchell containing his laptop, the strap of which lying diagonally across his prim dress shirt. He opened the door, to expose a sliver of the dreary neighborhood, painted gray from dawn overcast. He pulled her into a hug, flush to his shoulder as he stood a head above her. 

 

“I love you, darling.” His words were wistful, though almost teasing.

 

“Whatever,” was muffled into his shirt.

 

He kissed her light on the lips, and as always, had to angle her chin upwards with delicate pressure to accomplish this. A lopsided smile came across his face. His eyes dazzled in admiration, the saccharine feelings he held for her were tooth-rooting.  

 

“I’ll miss you, love of my life.” His hands wound around hers. 

 

Valerie was compelled to roll her eyes. “Just hurry and go, please.” 

 

Another kiss to her forehead. He ran down the driveway, and soon after she watched his extravagant sports car slide like a weightless phantom across the asphalt. The engine rumbles even when he disappeared down the street, but that too eventually faded.

 

Valerie closed the door. The click of the latch echoed. Eerie silence filled the house enough when he was around, when he was gone the silence punctured her ears in rhythmic tics of a clock. The place was clean, lifeless, deserted. A ghost town within a single structure, a moment captured in a still photograph. 

 

Gravity pulled her to the couch. She sunk into it, engulfed by layers of throws and cushions soft enough to swallow her. She flicked on the television. It was a wide expanse of black with the width of paper, propelled by glass. Images of photoshopped kardashians flickered. Valerie wandered to the fridge, then the freezer, returning to her placement with a tub of ice cream and a ladle. Her hair was so long it required to be tucked behind her ears to keep from dipping in her ice cream. Strands fell around her in waterfall streams of ink.

 

If Simon were here, he would fill the emptiness with his voice. Now, audio from the speakers took his place, filling the house with the illusion of company. She ladelled a spoonful of butterscotch ice cream.

 

Hours dripped away. The sun was touching the horizon now. He was late, likely working overtime. She picked up her phone, to text Simon a question of where he was. The blue bubble of text remained unread. She continued to sift through the channels. Static, the glimpse of an image, static, glimpse. On repeat. She could now see the bottom of the carton.

 

A local news channel flashed, with a stoic woman brandishing a microphone. Her lips moved, although the monotony of her voice made her impossible to listen to. Within a square, a car was flipped upside down upon its roof panel. Dents decorated its surface, hood crumpled in. The camera zoomed on the license plate.

 

Valerie dropped her spoon. It smudged sticky cream over leather and satin and silk. 

 

Her mind was racing. She stood, toppling over the coffee table in her haste. The wreck was on Twentieth and Broadway, making the nearest hospital Northwest. Her hands shook when she fumbled with the keys. Traffic was light, though she swerved around it.

 

Bleach and rubbing alcohol hung in the hospital. At the desk, a woman told her the room number. She skidded across the polished floor. Scuffs followed each step. Unshed tears burned the corners of her eyes. The numbers two and four hung over the door.

 

Tassels of light hair splayed out around the pillow, through bandages wrapped over his head. A steady beep of a pulse monitor came from a machine at his side. She tripped over herself running to the bedside.

 

“Oh honey, I’m so glad you’re okay.” She sobbed into his hospital gown. He smelt of blood and antibiotics. Her arms were a firm circumference around his frame at first, but she softened her hug in fear of hurting him. She cried for a long expanse of time, staining him with dots of water which turned into puddles.

 

Dual sources of pressure pressed on her shoulders. She leaned back. It was his hands, pushing her away. He gave her an uncomfortable smile, distant. His eyes were filled with confusion. 

 

“Excuse me,” he started with a rough though hesitant voice, “where do I know you from?”

 

Her heart sank into her stomach. If her pulse had a monitor, it would’ve gone silent. She made a terrified smile through her blotchy swollen eyes and streaks of tears. 

 

“What are you saying?” Her voice wavered. A different hand came to her shoulder. Someone with a white coat, and stethoscope over their neck. They ushered her outside.

 

“We did a scan, and he appears to have damaged his hippocampus,” the doctor said in a discreet tone, over the rolling of patience in wheelchairs. “His memory may be compromised indefinitely.”

 

She glanced through the thin window, where a nurse wrapped his forearm in a blood pressure cuff. He gandered up at her, making light conversation that was muffled through the door.

 

“We asked him a while ago if there was anyone we could contact. He mentioned his parents, though they live in a different state.” The doctor said. “What is your relation to him?” 

 

Valerie felt as if she were soon going to throw up. 

 

“I'm his fiance.” Through the window, the nurse puts a gloved hand up to her mouth and laughs, and Simon looks accomplished. He gave her one of those smiles that had always been reserved for her, lopsided and and endearing.

 

_ I was his fiance. _

  
  



	12. Chapter 12

Her love for him was heavy, thick and lustful. This was obvious when her gaze would linger for too long. Her pupils would drag over his features. They were dual blackholes, orbs darker than black which would consume all light that touched it. When she stared they would widen in an attempt to swallow him, casting out its circumference to eat him whole. It would become a cesspool, a bottomless puddle persuading him to jump in. Disappear and never be heard of again. 

 

In her heady daze she had no concern for personal boundary. She was a predator locked on their meal, she would stalk him and inspect him without relant. As she made moves to find his ins and outs and slither around them, constrict him until there was not a breath left in his body, he made his own observations. He had tested a grip around her arm to gauge her reaction. Bones made their imprint on her skin. Her wrists were reedy. Beneath the thin layer of parchment he could feel collagen and marrow. She carried herself as a malevolent cloaked creature when she could be snapped easier than a twig.

 

She was a human anatomy model, insides on display past a translucent coat. Webs of blue viens splintered over her arms and he was certain under her shirt was a defined ribcage. Her abdomen would be a painting of her viscera, and if he pressed around he could feel each individual organ. No flesh hung on her limbs. She was unadulterated, nothing more than skin and bone.

 

He himself was jagged muscle under a fitted sheet. The layer was too thick to expose any of his inner workings. Despite this he found himself wrung in tight knots of rope. There was not much struggle when there was a noose around his neck and strain on his trachea. His vision was blurred though he could discern those horrible eyes. They licked away at his soul in desperation for a taste of that flickering light. In his unconscious state he understood more than ever. She was hungry, she wanted to drain him.

 

He was terrified, although she was the mere wisp of a girl, so light if you blew hard enough she would float away. Reality resurfaced from his warped underwater world. Sound was muffled at first though became more defined, the images before him sharper. She hovered above his corpse, triumphent of her trophy kill. He could see the intent, how she skinned and flayed him with her gaze, eager to carve past his perfection to gauge his own viscera. To make him vulnerable. A carnivorous smile was curved onto her face, and she was panting like a rabid animal. Drool ran down her canines. Drips of saliva fell on his torso. The glint of a machete appeared in her palm. She brought it to his neck and teased a slicing motion across it.

 

“Should I have fun first, or after?” she asked. The blade poked at his jugular. If he were to answer, the movement of his neck would cause him to slice it open. He did not even breath, and refrained a gulp. The side of the knife slid over his cheek, as if it was a shave. The tip came in dangerous proximity to his eye and he squeazed them shut. 

 

“Don’t cut off too many body parts or it might not be as fun,” he joked through the wavering of his voice. She laughed, which garnered a flinch from him. A sharp tug came to both wrists, were the edge of metal dug into. They were draped above his head, handcuffed to the headboard.

 

She pushed her hips onto his package. “You’d be surprised at my creativity.” She leaned to whisper in his ear. “I can do a lot with severed parts.” Her breath was cold mist. A shiver of ice water trickled down his spine. All that adorned him was a ripped undershirt and boxers, while she had pounced fully clothed. She hovered over him to breathe intoxication chemicals down his throat. ”If you bite me I’ll wrench every tooth from your gums.” She kissed him and he reciprocated. Sand was pouring in his mouth to suffocate him. Powder that could be the taste of cocaine. 

 

With a feeble hand she removed his member from his boxers, which flushed with the swell of blood. She pulled away to pull her shirt over her head. He was right about the ribs carved into her torso. Although she did not take off her skirt, she lifted it to show there was nothing underneath. She guided his dick inside of herself, and sank down on it. He swore he could see the outline. A spark ignited a jealous passion within herself, and she rode him out while suffacting him. Her nails were as sharp as the machete.

 

His mind was fuzzy from orgasm when she carved open his chest, ripped out his heart and ate it. Life drained from him while she cackled in delight, animate for once.

 


	13. Chapter 13

Steam was blurred. Mist spread along the hot water spurted into a flower. It rose along the white tiled wall, some sinking to the ground, making a turn, and floating upwards. The adjacent compartment was open, and mist slowly swayed to the opposite side and was washed away by the water.

 

Waves on the surface looked down, and a pair of blue eyes burst into a storm. Thin but passivated numbness was mixed with pain. Steam escaped from the cold water, stroked the cheeks, fainting a little bit of water vapor in the blue scorpion.

 

The dense and fragrant citrus fine mist mixed with alcohol solvent instantly caught his tears. Long, dense eyelashes hung with water drops. All the exhaled wines spit on his face, holding a soft sweet fragrance.

 

Lotus just stared at him without saying a word until he finally found an excuse to complain. He struggled to resist the gasps that almost came out of consciousness, and squeezed a few dull and depressed syllables from the depths of his throat. The mouthful of words cannot be swallowed, and the syllables that are mixed up and broken together overflow along the corners of the lips.

 

Both the lips and the tongue are accompanied by a melting heat. Lotus only feels that there is a boiling hot water in the brain, and there are bubbles in the air. The ink color in the blue dragonfly dissipated at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the light quickly slammed down. The fluted hair spurted out.

 

the tip of the nose is also only a small gap of a few millimeters. It seems to be able to hear the weaker sound of the eyelashes across the air when the other eye blinks. The heart in the chest beats at the same height, and the chest is agitated at a noisy frequency.

 

As the torrential faucet plummeted, in the sound of a sloppy water, the mind gradually darkened, like a city that was hit by heavy rain at night.

 

A gray, sinking, residual reason is like the glow of the streetlights in the rain, the faint faint glow does not break the heavy rain and fog, only a few traces of raindrops. Only the light from the light bulb hidden in the water ripples on the road. The ground is scattered.

 

With the heavy rain and deep smog of the air, the remaining sanity in his brain was eaten.

  
He knows.  
  
A person is like reading a book or drinking alcohol. Some people are advertising flyers, some are best-selling books that are withdrawn at any time, some are dull academic dictionaries, and some are long-lost novels.  
  
Some people are like plain beer, some are like shallow sake, some are like open agave, and some are like wild vodka.  
  
He may not be able to describe exactly which book is Rue, which glass of wine, which type of person.  
  
But he knows that Rue is his book, his alcohol, his person.

 

I swallow down misery. Flecks of chipped red paint from the essence of human integral dries on her boned knuckled. They tense and press white bone past skin. 

 

я тебя люблю, шиня  
я очень люблю тебя  
я не одержим  
пожалуйста, не бегайте  
вы не можете скрыть  
я умру за тебя  
Ты боишься?  
вы можете исчезнуть

 

Держись подальше, ты урод  
положить нож вниз  
пожалуйста остановись

 

я хочу сохранить тебя  
я повесю тебя на стену  
как трофей  
я поставлю ваши органы в банку  
увековечить вас  
теперь ты мой  
ваши крылья захвачены 


End file.
